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A good teacher is surrounded by MANY great teachers! Thank you to the great teachers at my school and out in blogland!

Friday, June 1, 2012

Do You Have a Class Pet?

If you do …
you have to read the book, “The World According to Humphrey”
by Betty Birney.I heard about it last year and since I have
class pets I thought it would be a great read-aloud. It was a hit. My students
talked about this hamster named Humphrey all year.

The book became a class favorite quickly.It is about a hamster, named Humphrey, which
lives in a room 26 and has many adventures in the classroom and on his weekend
trips to the students’ houses.He gets
into some trouble and is worried about the teacher, but everyone who spends some
time with him is changed.Since my
students loved it the librarian ordered the whole series for the library and a
few parents and grandparents ordered them for Christmas presents.

“The World According to Humphrey” will be my first read-aloud this coming school
year because I plan on doing it before bringing in our class rats and guppies.

I am working on lesson plans for it in my
daily read-aloud time including extensions for my gifted students using other books in the series. There are 7 books in the Humphrey series with a couple more
coming this summer.The books are between
the Accelerated reading levels 4.0- 4.4, which is perfect for my above average
readers.In "The World According to Humphrey" plan I will include vocabulary
study, geography, role-play, creative writing, research, and more. I also plan on including some hands-on work
with our own class pets. The author’s website, http://bettybirney.com/index.html,
is great and I plan on leading students there, too.

Please let me know if you have class
pets and how you handle them in your classroom.